Undemocratic Freedoms

From time to time, after I’ve expressed my view on a given topic, a reader will write with a singular denunciation. “Good luck running on that platform,” he will scoff, and then he will make a dismissive allusion to the decline of the American Whigs in the 19th century.

This criticism is an extraordinarily irritating one, carrying with it the dual presumptions that what the incumbent majority wants is the most important of questions and that, if one refers an issue to the transient desires of the crowd, one is thereby relieved of the responsibility to argue that issue on its merits, neither of which is true.